Tess Sharpe Books in Order

If you want a great first YA mystery: Far From You → The Girls I've Been
If you want Nora O'Malley's full arc: The Girls I've Been → The Girl in Question
If you prefer adult crime fiction: Barbed Wire Heart → No Body, No Crime
If you want a queer romance: 6 Times We Almost Kissed
If you're reading with younger dinosaur fans: Off the Grid → The Yosemite Six

Tess Sharpe was born in a mountain cabin and grew up in rural northern California, a landscape of woods, back roads, and small communities that still feels close to her work. A lot of her fiction carries that same sense of being a little removed from the rest of the world, where people know each other too well and secrets have room to grow.

She was homeschooled, read widely, and started writing young. Sharpe has said there was no TV in the house, so books became a huge part of her childhood, and by about age twelve she was already serious about wanting to be a writer. Her mother took that seriously, which mattered.

Books got there first.

Sharpe has also been open about how hard her teen years were. She has spoken about depression, self-harm, and suicide attempts, and about reading Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak at a moment when she badly needed hope. That helps explain why young adult fiction sits at the center of her career. She does not treat teenage pain as small, and she writes like she knows readers can tell when an author is faking it.

Before publication, her path to writing was not neat. She has said she wrote Barbed Wire Heart after dropping out of college, moving back home, and working as a maid, and that the book took her close to a decade to finish. Her first published novel was Far From You in 2014, a mystery about grief, addiction, and the murder of Sophie's best friend. Readers found a tense plot there, but also a queer love story and a narrator whose hurt never feels simplified.

Then her range kept widening.

In adult fiction, Barbed Wire Heart follows Harley McKenna, the daughter of a meth kingpin trying to survive the violent life her father built. In YA, The Girls I've Been and its sequel The Girl in Question turn Nora O'Malley into one of Sharpe's signature heroines, smart, funny under pressure, and shaped by a past she cannot neatly leave behind. 6 Times We Almost Kissed shows another side of Sharpe, slower, more romantic, and just as interested in the emotional fallout of family, illness, and memory.

She has also moved easily into tie-ins and collaborative work. The Evolution of Claire gives Claire Dearing from Jurassic World a prequel story, the Maisie Lockwood adventures bring younger readers into that universe, and Captain Marvel: Liberation Run and White Widow: Secret Sisters show how comfortable Sharpe is with action, big franchises, and stubborn girls who refuse to stay in the boxes built for them.

Across genres, some things keep showing up. Sharpe likes girls and women with sharp survival instincts. She likes rural places, forests, hidden roads, and towns where danger can feel both personal and very close. She returns again and again to trauma, loyalty, found family, and queer characters who get to be messy, brave, funny, angry, and alive all at once.

These days she still lives deep in the backwoods, with dogs and a growing colony of formerly feral cats. It feels fitting. Her books are often full of people trying to get free, but they are also written by someone who clearly knows how to listen to the woods, wait out a hard silence, and then make the next move.